I realized it's been awhile since I've done a digital painting. That needed to change.

I wanted to have something epic done before Youmacon to sell as a print, and given Craig and I have been binging on some Persona 4 Arena, it's only fitting that Elizabeth was the answer to both my above dilemmas.

and holy crap, was this a project. This was my first time giving a digital picture a full background. It was also my first time working on an 11x17" canvas, which was both AWESOME and frustrating. My old laptop would NOT have been able to handle it, and I'm actually surprised my current one took it as well as it did. XD

I'll be selling these for $10 at future conventions, though if you'd like to order one online, note me and I'll be happy to mail it to you Your purchase will help pay my dental bills, lol

Thank you! I think in the end it took about 12-14 hours over the course of 3-4 days, and there were certain parts that just plain took longer than others (like her FACE LKHSDLGHSDF D: ) - but on the whole, it actually went by much faster than I thought!

omg thats a really long time. but then again im not surprised, yeah it mustv been tough doing just the rigth shading for her face and body. what other parts took a while to do and which one werent as bad? that way i can have an idea of what to pay extra attention to when i decide to color and draw. if you look at my profile i have alot of crappy drawings but these past few months ive been just focusing on getting better at the drawing part. but now i wanna start shading and coloring as well. from the sound of it tough it doesnt seem like it was that fast though. but my hat goes off to you. to do it with breaks and still have it com out all uniform and professional. its amazing!!

Well I can actually give you some progress shots if you want to get an idea of how I worked on this Kind of like a mini-tutorial but not but sortof?

[link] - I start off with a very loose sketch and solidify lineart from there. For this picture in particular, I worked at a GIGANTIC file size, so what you see here (and in the following pictures) is at 1/4 of the full resolution.

[link] - I followed a tutorial for making the magic circle, duplicated it within itself, and started throwing base colors down into the finished lineart.

[link] - I can't remember the exact steps that went into this part, but I think I made a new layer and covered Elizabeth in deep blue shadows and set it to multiply to get the right color pallete - then did the same thing with the light source on either screen or overlay. Either way, this was just throwing the basic color pallete onto the main picture and getting a feel for the light sources/shadows.

[link] - Sometimes I make the hair on a separate layer without lineart, sometimes I don't. For this one, I did, and started painting details on her left hand/arm.

[link] - This was at the 90% finished stage. All I had to do from here was color the rest of the dress and detail the shoes.

All in all, what I can say is just keep practicing. You'll start to find that you'll improve in small jumps - suddenly, something will click and you'll find hands much easier to draw. After drawing a hundred faces in your notebook, something will click and you'll realize what you've been doing wrong, and be able to fix it. Meanwhile, every picture has its easy and difficult parts Elizabeth's hands and face took forever to color in this picture, while her dress didn't take very long at all. The more you work at it, the more you'll find your strengths and weaknesses, and the more you practice, the less those weaknesses will bother you.

thanks so much. that was actually pretty enlightening. itll come in handy when i finally save up for my own laptop and get a pen tablet.. you wouldnt happen to know if they sell portable pen tablets. like for example a type of electronic sketch book. would you? actually nvm ill just search it up. heheh sorry. dumb question.

Aww thank you! I'm actually kind of sad that a lot of details were drowned out by the SUPER BLUE GLOW, particularly around her outstretched hand. But the ones on her boots still turned out well, and I'm in love with her other hand 8D /outofcontextfun

It was actually a tutorial! [link] It took awhile to figure out how to get the pen tool to do what I wanted, but after awhile, it finally came together. I definitely recommend making one basic circle and duplicating/resizing from there. That's what I did to fill out my magic circle